Yes, you heard that right! It took a while, but GOD finally released me to make this tutorial and helped me make it and keep it short! HE is so good!!

Before getting into the technical aspects of it, this is the tutorial:

As you can imagine, this scene took a little while to stick together, but it's not about the scene - it's only there to illustrate a point. That point is:

You can have cell shading with soft shadows and even ambient occlusion, in Blender

In essence, this is one area where you can have your cake and eat it :)! GOD is so awesome! HE lead me to this, while I was busy looking into how to make anime backgrounds. HE specifically pointed out that anime backgrounds have really strong ambient occlusion and smooth shadows and my first reaction was that toon shading and soft shadows don't mix. So anyway, I just started working on trying to get the background alone working and looking right, but I just couldn't get the look right, you know and HE said that I should try re-creating an existing scene or background and in doing so, I'll know what it takes, so I did and during that process, in the space of a day (half creating the scene and the other half, compositing), HE helped me find the solution.

The scene I worked on was from this tutorial by Mclelun. Below is my result:

(ALWAYS listen to GOD - HE knows what HE's talking about)

I will add that I think McLelun's is quite a bit more anime-esque than mine is, but this one exercise was so worth it, I'm happy with it. If GOD did not challenge me to recreate an existing background, to learn how it works, I'd most likely still be thinking it's just not gonna work, haha.

So I want to encourage you, if you don't know JESUS, your life is less than what it could be. Make HIM your LORD and let HIM save you from your own self-destructive ways and enable you to be the person HE made you to be. It's the best decision you can ever make and the only one that has awesome results in the scope of now and eternity! :D

"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Revelation 22:18-21

"Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." Proverbs 30:6

About Me

Marius Oberholster

Centurion

Hey! I've been doing this full-time since July of 2011. It has been an incredible learning experience, not only learning how Blender works (still learning), but also about Open-Source and the incredible software available.
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This Blog will be a way to stay up to date on all things Panther Dynamics as well as some personal stuff as well.

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